Disclaimer:
The story-line is mine. The rest of things are not. Is that enough of a disclaimer? I hope so.
Lizzy feels she owns something to her family. When Jane died, she was unable, for the longest time, to do more than the bare minimum. It was her mother, who was aching, who took care of her. It was her sisters who acted as if she had not been a spiritless wanderer for weeks. When she finally joined them in the sitting room, they gave her a cup of hot tea, which warmed her hands and her soul. They talked about the good memories they had of Jane, so they would not forget them. They talked about her kindness, and so much there was to say that the topic lasted for days. Once they have said everything, it seems as if the healing has begun, and they were able to move to another topics. It hurt, it still hurts and probably always will.
Therefore, when her mother is overcome for the grief of losing the daughters with whom she had more in common, Elizabeth starts to act as the mistress of the house. She works with the housekeeper and once a week goes to see the tenants. Sometimes she goes with her sisters or mother. Sometimes only with a maid. It gives her time to think. She speaks with her father, but there is something missing. Perhaps it is the fact that he can no longer laugh at the follies of others because laugh do not appear to be welcome in the house any longer.
Just as before, one day the world is a dark place full of shadows, and the next one a brave beacon of light dares to come into their lives. Almost half a year has passed from that fateful day near the river. The Autumn has turned the country into the warmest colours. The days are shorter, but some of them are still warm and that allows the Bennet's hearts to open a bit and enjoy the life around them.
It is Mr Bennet who decides that a trip will be good for their spirits. Mrs Bennet is dubious at first, but the idea picks up certain charm the more they think and talk about it. The harvest has been good, and with so little socialization for the last year, they have saved more than enough money to travel for three weeks without much ado.
The girls are exited about the trip, there is no doubt about it. It might just be what they need to clean the remaining ill-feelings. So, a travel is organized to the lakes, where Mrs Bennet's brother has intended to travel this summer with his wife. For some reason Mrs Bennet could not recall right now, they were unable to travel that far, but they certainly will be kind enough to give them some advice and pointers on how best to travel.
For the next days, everything is a blur of excitement and preparations. They got new travel gowns, and the carriage is reviewed and updated to ease the travel. It seems as if it is a new stage of their lives, a happy and exiting one at least.
They leave at the beginning of November, shortly after the anniversary of Jane's demise. The death anniversary was a sad and solemn day, but the pain is not as intense or longstanding as before. Jane has become almost a happy memory in its own right.
They leave and for a week they travel North. For the ladies, who have never travelled farther than London, it is an adventure. Mr Bennet is happy to detail everything they are going to see. He expects to see some of his old friends from the University, and has even written them in advance with an approximate arrival date to each city and village in their way.
So North they go, stopping sometimes just out of a whim when they cross some particularly charming village or view. They have so much fun it was unthinkable weeks ago. They bond as a family. In most villages they stop, Mr Bennet walks with Mrs Bennet on his arm, and they look at the shops' windows and act as a courting couple. Sometimes their daughters act as chaperons, but others it is just the two of them as a pair of lovesick fools. He buys her sweets and some new ribbons now that they are out of their mourning, and she listens attentively and asks questions when he stops in the library and starts to ramble about this book or the other.
Elizabeth, Mary, and Kitty are having almost as much fun. Elizabeth walks everywhere she can. When it is with her sisters, she goes more slowly, but in her morning walks she goes as fast as possible while still dubbing the movement "walking". She sees new types of nature around her and is excited about the precipices, and the hilltops, and the mountains and the lakes. She likes the snow drops and the fact that the ground is covered by ice, and the snow goes higher than a couple of inches. She has seen several sleds, and she was even in one when her family visited some of her father's schoolmates. She keeps thinking that it is the best thing ever.
Mary, who has had some doubts regarding her religious ideas when her kindest and jolliest sisters were taken from this Earth, has learned to pay attention to her environments, and she is entranced by what she sees. There is nature, undoubtedly, but there are also cities and villages with human constructions. Mary's eyes drink the architecture of the great houses and churches. The palaces, the manors, the cathedrals… she is very taken with the creations of man. And sometimes she visits the interior and finds other arts: Sculptures and paintings, sometimes on their own, sometimes as part of the interior decoration. She never thought about these other arts, always absorbed as she was in the music. She knows does not like dancing of poetry exceedingly, but she should have never guessed that she would like architecture, sculpture and painting so much. Her eyes are hungry, and they greedily look at everything that does not have place at Hertfordshire, and she commits it to memory so she will be able to recall it once she goes back to her little corner of England.
Kitty discovers that she likes to travel very much. Her coughing has not improved, but neither has it aggravate. She goes swiftly from the carriage to the inns, and from the inns to brief excursions to the shops or tea rooms with her sisters or mother. Never when the weather was not safe. Mrs Bennet has already lost one daughter to the weather, and she is not willing to lose anymore. But she is not a wholly irrational woman, and she allows her daughters to move around as long as they go with warm clothes and come back when expected. The carriage is always ready to take them from one place to other if they want it, so they would not be too cold. Mr and Mrs Bennet, as stated before, prefer to walk, as does Elizabeth. Kitty and her new muff like to go to the tea room and see the people there and make up their stories. Perhaps she will grow to be a writer of novels.
It is when they have a couple of days left before having to go back when they come by the idea of ice-skating in the frozen lake. All the locals do it, it is one of the most popular activities. Mr Bennet remembers the activity fondly from his university days, and even Mary, who is not as quick on her feet as her sisters, is decided to try it.
At the beginning they all stay close to the shore of the lake. There are several shrieks and squeals, followed by giggling and Mr Bennet laugher. There are also several falls, some of them spectacular. By the end of the day, Kitty is next to her parents enjoying some tea and biscuits. She grimaces every time she sits, and is mad as a wet hen because she has fallen without dignity when she was trying to learn how to turn. Mary, who has not done so bad, is still skating, trying to go on one foot as see has seen some do. One of the local girls is working with her on this purpose. Elizabeth has taken to ice-skating as a duck to water, and is racing from one side of the lake to the other as fast as she can. She has competed against several of the younger skaters, but the have move on to skate in what appears to be dances. Elizabeth has promised to join them later, but right now, she has not move as much as her body wants. She slides over the ice far away from the crowd, only to come back, only to go away again. This might have been the fastest try yet, and she has never felt so alive. A noise under her feet catches her attention, and she looks down.
In an instant, she has never felt so cold or so scared. She can only see darkness, and most urgent, she cannot breathe. She kicks and moves her arms frantically, only to hit her body with something. She turns and sees white. She hits it with her hands, but it does not move, nor break. She is running out of air, she cannot breathe. Everything hurts.
The sound of ice breaking is frightening, but seeing a woman falling into the lake is terrifying. Most of the skaters speed close to the gap, but they stop before coming too close. Once the ice is broken, it is very easy for it to keep breaking. What is worse, the lady has not yet come back up in the gap. That means that she has moved from the position, and that she could be anywhere beyond the ice. The skaters look down but they do not see any colour beyond black "What colour was she wearing?" They ask "A dark blue coat", answers Mary, who has followed the skaters as fast as possible. That is right, she has looked fetching, but with the daylight decreasing by the second, it was harder and harder to tell the colours.
Finally, one of them seems a hand hitting against the ice. He screams for help, and the ice is broken shortly after, but it is already too late, and they are barely able to catch the hand before the corpse starts to naturally sink. Mrs Bennet has come to the shore with her husband and daughter, but in her heart of hearts, she already knows that her second born is no longer alive. Mr Bennet falls to his knees in pain, hoping against logic that she is not his daughter, that instead it is some unfortunate stranger. But she is not. He can see her motionless body being carried towards him, like a doll. So many times, he has read about life and death from a philosophical point of view, and now he has another dead daughter, but none of the lines he has ever read is able to help with his pain. They also were not able to help him with the deaths of his other two daughters. He feels Mrs Bennet's arms around him, and for a second it anchors him before he feels the pain again. Mrs Bennet asks him to stand up, and they go to Lizzy. Kitty and Mary are already there, looking at Lizzy but not being able to do more. She does not look like Lizzy, all wet and still and pale. Lizzy was lifeful and with rosy cheeks. This is not longer Lizzy. Mr Bennet and his lady hug their remaining daughters, and together they cry.
The trip back home is horrible. They are carrying Lizzy back with them. The carpenter was able to make a box fast enough, but the fact that they are carrying her mortal rests is almost as if Elizabeth's ghosts is also in the carriage. The roads are frozen and the car goes slow, but since they stop significantly less than when they went North, it takes them about the same time to return to Hertfordshire. For all the members of the family, the trip is at the same time shorter and longer. They do not talk or laugh or smile. Mostly they just sit there, eyes unseeing, their minds thinking about the disgraces that surround the family. Elizabeth Bennet is cried, sometimes with wallowing and sometimes with silent tears, in a carriage heading South.